Norway to Steve Jobs: Action, not words

Via MacNN, Torgeir Waterhouse of the Norwegian Consumer Council has responded to Steve Jobs' "thoughts on DRM" published yesterday. In that open letter, Steve Jobs repudiated the concept of DRM while simultaneously defending Apple's refusal to license FairPlay, and ultimately blamed the record companies for the whole mess. Not surprisingly, that letter has done nothing to change Norway's stance on the iTunes Store, that being it is illegal, nor the date by which the situation must be rectified, October 1st. Togeir Waterhouse did say that Norway was "happy" to see Steve addressing the issue of DRM, and then went on to deconstruct the letter.

"[Steve Jobs] also goes on to turn the whole issue on its head by stating iPod owners are not locked into [the] iTunes Music Store - the issue our complaint [addresses] is of course the opposite, iTunes Music Store customers are locked to the iPod."

While this is true, it is also true that other companies, such as Microsoft, pursue a similar strategy, something Steve Jobs argued. It would have been nice if the Norwegians would have taken the opportunity to explicitly condemn those companies too, but that issue was sidestepped.

"The fact remains that both iTunes Music Store and others are unfair to consumers no matter how many download services follow the proprietary approach."

Even more disappointing is a curt dismissal of the argument that it is the record labels who are ultimately responsible for the situation. Instead, Waterhouse put the blame on Apple, as "they're still the company that's selling music to the consumers and are responsible for offering the consumer a fair deal according to Norwegian law."

Expanding the idea of corporate responsibility for a moment, one wonders whether Microsoft has a responsibility to Mac users in Norway. Since the company has ceased development of WMP for the Mac, it has effectively eliminated even the possibility of WMP-based media with DRM for the Mac, but that apparently doesn't matter.

It must be nice to live in a place where such a simplistic view of the world can be made into a cause for action so easily. Welcome to Norway: it's all Apple's fault.